tion was
put forth announcing in boastful language to the English people that
their rightful King had now signally refuted those slanderers who had
accused him of affecting zeal for religious liberty merely in order to
serve a turn. If he were at heart inclined to persecution, would he not
have persecuted the Irish Protestants? He did not want power. He did not
want provocation. Yet at Dublin, where the members of his Church were
the majority, as at Westminister, where they were a minority, he
had firmly adhered to the principles laid down in his much maligned
Declaration of Indulgence, [221] Unfortunately for him, the same wind
which carried his fair professions to England carried thither also
evidence that his professions were insincere. A single law, worthy of
Turgot or of Franklin, seemed ludicrously out of place in the midst of a
crowd of laws which would have disgraced Gardiner or Alva.

A necessary preliminary to the vast work of spoliation and slaughter
on which the legislators of Dublin were bent, was an Act annulling the
authority which the English Parliament, both as the supreme legislature
and as the supreme Court of Appeal, had hitherto exercised over
Ireland, [222] This Act was rapidly passed; and then followed, in quick
succession, confiscations and proscriptions on a gigantic scale. The
personal estates of absentees above the age of seventeen years were
transferred to the King. When lay property was thus invaded, it was not
likely that the endowments which had been, in contravention of every
sound principle, lavished on the Church of the minority would be spared.
To reduce those endowments, without prejudice to existing interests,
would have been a reform worthy of a good prince and of a good
parliament. But no such reform would satisfy the vindictive bigots who
sate at the King's Inns. By one sweeping Act, the greater part of the
tithe was transferred from the Protestant to the Roman Catholic
clergy; and the existing incumbents were left, without one farthing
of compensation, to die of hunger, [223] A Bill repealing the Act of
Settlement and transferring many thousands of square miles from Saxon to
Celtic landlords was brought in and carried by acclamation, [224]

Of legislation such as this it is impossible to speak too severely:
but for the legislators there are excuses which it is the duty of the
historian to notice. They acted unmercifully, unjustly, unwisely. But it
would be absurd to expect mercy